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Monday, May 12, 2014

#dblogweek Day One: Change the World

Well hello everyone; long time, no see! Sorry to disappear off the face of the planet for about a month, but that's just how life is sometimes. I'm back and super excited to be participating in the fifth annual DBlog Week! I participated in 2012 and last year I just wasn't feeling blog posting vibes when it came to the prompts, but I love this year's prompts and I'm really excited to be writing in response to all of them. If you want to get involved, it's not too late! You can go to the DBlog Week 2014 page and sign up there; links to all of the prompts are also listed on that page. Now, let's get into the prompt and what I have to say.

The Prompt:

Let’s kick off Diabetes Blog Week by talking about the diabetes causes and issues that really get us fired up. Are you passionate about 504 plans and school safety? Do diabetes misconceptions irk you? Do you fight for CGM coverage for Medicare patients, SDP funding, or test strip accuracy? Do you work hard at creating diabetes connections and bringing support? Whether or not you “formally” advocate for any cause, share the issues that are important to you.

Ooh, I like this one already. I feel like the words 'fired up' would probably be included in a description of me. Things I get fired up about are people judging and trying to tell me how I should manage my diabetes, people stereotyping diabetes, stupididiots being stupid, and people refusing to stop believing in misconceptions about diabetes. So basically, a lot of things fire me up. Let's go in chronological order so I can bring some sense into the nonsense that I'll be talking about. (Do you see what I did there? I'm slightly punny.)

To give anyone who ever speaks to me fair warning, I will yell and scream and be angry at you if you ever try to tell me I'm a bad diabetic. Have you seen this handy dandy chart yet? Have you read any of my blog posts yet? If you have, you would already know that. I could go on for years and years about how people like this should never be able to speak and should keep their awful opinions to themselves. That's all I can really say without standing on my soapbox for the next four days. (If you want to be a brave young soul and read through my feelings towards idiots with dumb opinions, you can read through here and here...) And if you really want to tell me how to manage my diabetes, come back when you have an M.D. with a specialty in endocrinology and maybe we can talk.

I made another chart. It's more straight to the point.

People stereotyping diabetes is one of the 20,000 different things that bothers moi. "Oh you have type 1? That one's the bad kind, right?" "Type 2 is the fat kind, right?" "You can cure your diabetes by eating no sugar, right?" No, no, and definitely no. First of all, all types of diabetes are 'bad.' No diabetic thinks that diabetes is some fun illness that is easy to deal with. (Fun illness is kind of an oxymoron...) Whether you're Type 1, Type 2, LADA, or gestational, you will have a tough time with diabetes and that sucks, so I think all diabetes count as the bad type; they are all terrible in their own special ways. Second, TYPE 2 IS NOT THE FAT KIND. How can I get that through people's heads? Type 2 can be onset by poor lifestyle, but can also be just as easily genetically inherited as Type 1 is. Type 2 is different in that Type 2 is characterized as your body having a resistance to insulin, while Type 1 is characterized by the beta cells in the Islet of Langerhans' in your pancreas being attacked by your immune system and causing a stopping of production of insulin by the cells in your pancreas. And last, but not least, diabetes is a chronic illness. Do you know what that means? According to the U.S. National Library of Medicine, "[chronic] refers to something that continues over an extended period of time. A chronic condition is usually long-lasting and does not easily or quickly go away." If diabetes is a chronic illness, then that means it won't easily go away. Not eating one polymer counts as an easy fix, to me at least, so that most definitely wouldn't stop diabetes. Speaking of people trying to tell me how to fix my diabetes, let's go on to the next topic!

And the scum of the scum and the lowest of the low awards in my book go to the people that won't stop believing in common misconceptions about diabetes, even after they have been told repeatedly that they are wrong. Honestly, the world is not all about you and your opinions won't always be right. Can you just accept that and move on, please? It's better to do it before you anger the whole DOC, too.

So to answer the prompt, my passion would be educating the general public about what diabetes is and isn't. If you're nice about it, I'll be nice about it. If you're a total annoying human being about it, I'll give that right back to you. And that is all for today.

Moral of the Story: I will burn you with my diabetes advocacy. (Do you see what I did there? I'm fired up? Burning? *awkward laughter*)